Colorado, of course

We have an opportunity to visit our Colorado family a couple days while Kim attends a continuing education class in Denver.  As usual, always fun to be around family.

Kim drove her car and insisted on driving.  I think Dan has enjoyed the opportunity to be in the passenger seat the whole trip for a change.  The eight hours went quickly because I had earphones in my ear almost the entire time.  I am listening to Defending Jacob, an excellent book.  I might be able to finish it on the way home.

I had the opportunity to watch Carly practice her gymnastics last night—a four hour practice.  Those little girls work hard.  No pictures because I forgot my camera.  I know, hard to believe.

This morning Carly & I painted glasses.  Maybe I’ll get a good picture tomorrow. 

This afternoon Trent played two basketball games.  I think his league setup is unique.  A group of boys form the league, I’m not sure how many.  There are a set number of coaches who volunteer.  Then the boys are mixed each week as well as have a different coach.  Drue says the practices are very structured and involve all the boys.  I have to think this is an excellent learning situation for these upper elementary age boys—very fair and lets the boys play with all their friends.

 

Not many plans for tomorrow.  The forecast says colder here so it might involve sitting in front of the fire and a few games. 

Organizing & storing pictures

I take a lot of pictures.  It is easy to remember when I started taking digital pictures—May, 1999, when Aaron was born.  So, in May I will have 14 years of pictures stored digitally.  That amounts to around 150 GB of information.  It would be more except that early digital cameras took smaller pictures. 

As we have all learned at some point, pictures need to be stored somewhere other than on a computer that might crash.  Several years ago, my kids gave me a external hard drive.  However, I have about filled it up backing up my 2012 pictures.  I’ve been able to free up some space by checking for duplicate pictures.  I’ve found plenty.  Removing those has freed up enough space for several months into 2013.  But, I still will need to purchase something more.

My goodness how things have changed in just a few years.  Now, I am looking at something that holds two terabytes or more of information.  I can see how that might be necessary though.  Movies take so much space to store. 

While doing research on the new monster storage devices that are about the size of a small book, I have discovered something rather disturbing.  That is, they can’t be trusted.  One article in particular said anyone trusting all their information on an external hard drive will lose it, because at some point all hard drives fail. 

Great…I still can’t feel that all my data is safe.  There are two solutions.  One is to store everything online or “in the cloud” or two, burn everything onto a disk and store them in a dark, dry place.  So, because I don’t want to pay to store 14 plus years of information online, I am going to start burning disks after I get rid of all my duplicate pictures.  Even with the disk storage, I will continue to use the external hard drives for their ease of use. 

This has become an interesting topic for me.  Because most people have a lot of digital pictures anymore, I’m wondering what others are doing with their pictures and other data.  Recently, I overheard someone say they have several years of pictures on their camera! 

Meanwhile, I’m enjoying looking at a lot of old pictures in the process this winter.  

Basketball to Music

Aaron and Adam attended the String Fling again this year.  Kansas State University sponsors the day and half learning experience open to orchestra members.
Aaron’s group was first. 
Here he is in the far back row with his bass.  Not sure what he was signaling here—maybe that his instrument is turned.  His conductor teaches in Olathe Public Schools.  We all thought he probably could relate well to the junior high age kids with his sense of humor with the music.  Here is the entire group.
Adam’s group played in the 2nd session.  Here he is with his viola.

He also had a young man as a conductor.  I didn’t take note of where he teaches.  He said he had been a participating member of the String Fling only a few years back. 
Adam’s group.

It is amazing that the group members did not see the music they played this morning until they arrived on Saturday morning.   Impressive how much they were able to accomplish in a short time. 
I have a glitch in processing the video/audio I took of the event.  If I get it figured out, I’ll be posting that later.